Agriculture and food production10 Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition. Hobsbawm describes how, at the end of the nineteenth
century, in the wake of rising nationalism, European countries adopted national songs and flags, as well
as so- called old traditions that were meant to foster national pride.
11 Japanese text in Murakami Shigeyoshi, Tennō no saishi, 68, 69.
12 Murakami, Tennō no saishi, 75–106. For subsequent propaganda about rice, one may consult Kokutai
shikan (1929), Kokutai no hongi kaisetsu taisei (1940) and Kokutai no hongi to nōdō (1942). For details, see
Verschuer, Rice, 278–280.
13 Yanagita’s interpretations are cited in books such as Wakamori Tarō, Yanagita Kunio to rekishigaku,
201–205, as well as in dictionaries and in general publications on rice in Japanese history “ine no
Nihonshi.”
14 Nihon shoki, book 2 ‘Jindai ge’ 9th dan, second version, 152, 153, in Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, vol. 67.
This edition, and all other editions, give the modern reading “rice ears” (inaho) while reproducing the ori-
ginal text in kanji that says only “grain ears” (ho). See the “five grains” (gokoku) in Nihon shoki, book 1 ‘Jindai
KƞUIEBO
BOEKojiki, book I (“Gokoku no kigen”), Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, vol. 1, 85.
15 A discussion on rituals, court ceremonies, and prayers appears in Verschuer, Rice, 263–296. See the norito
prayers in Engishiki, book 8, 159–177, and the Thanksgiving ritual in Engishiki, book 31, 749, and book
35, 800, in the Shintei zōhō Kokushi taikei edition.
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Nihon rekishi saikō. See also Hirose, Jōmon kara Yayoi
e no shin rekishi zō BOE5BNBEB
Rettō bunka no hajimari. In 2014, Andō Hiromichi, “Suiden chūshin
shikan hihan no kōzai,” 405–448, traced the background and history of the rice- centered views from
the perspective of Yayoi archaeology and called for a change in the conventional opinion, which has
been biased by the primacy of rice for too long.
17 Hōgetsu and Furushima, quoted by Takagi Tokurō, “Chūsei wa seisan- ryoku ga kōjō shita jidai dewa
nakatta no desu ka,” 30–33. Educational textbooks such as Shōsetsu Nihonshi zuroku, 122, mention
draught tillage, intensive fertilization, and double- cropping as arguments for the medieval advances in
rice production. Takagi gives a summary of these arguments and deplores the lack, as of 2012, of proper
agronomic analyses of farming techniques.
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shokuryō no kisoteki kenkyū.”
19 Amino Yoshihiko, Nihon chūsei no minshū zō BOEiOBTBLVJDIJHFOSPOOPLVQQVLVw
20 Sasaki Kōmei and Matsuyama Toshio, Hatasaku bunka no tanjō 5BOJHBXB,FOJDIJFUBM
Nihon zō o toina-
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to Yayoi bunka.”
21 See Gina Barnes, “Japan’s Natural Setting,” 5, for variations in reading the topographic statistics accord-
ing to sources and definitions of mountain areas. Makino Tomitarō, Shin Nihon shokubutsu zukan, lists
3,996 plant species of Japan. A table of “Calorific Values of Foods” appears in Verschuer, Rice, 320.
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ke shozatsujiki ni tsuite,” 9–20. These reports are reinterpreted in respect to tax duties, by Verschuer,
Rice, 221–224.
23 On shifting cultivation in Europe, see François Sigaut, L’agriculture et le feu, and Axel Steensberg, Fire-
Clearance Husbandry: Traditional Techniques Throughout the World. The figures are quoted from FAO,
“Shifting Cultivation,” 159–164.
24 Sasaki Kōmei, Inasaku izen, 88–136. See also an ethnographic survey done in Vietnam in 1949 by
Georges Condominas, We Have Eaten the Forest (first published in French in 1983). In Laos, in 2010, each
family in the Koknang village of Luang Prabang province, at 1100 meters in altitude, cultivated both
one hectare of irrigated rice and a swidden field with cotton, sesame, and dry rice. See Harada Nobuo,
“Raos hokubu sonraku no keikan to nōmin,” 251–253. I visited about ten villages in the Luang Prabang
province in Laos, in February 2014, all situated at high altitudes, and noticed that most of the families
lived by one swidden plot, a small orchard, pig and poultry farming, as well as gathering of plants,
hunting, and fishing (no permanent crop). Yet as Totman, The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial
Japan, 17–18, 22, notes, the botanic environment of Japan underwent thorough changes through history
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25 Farris, Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645–900, 109–112.
26 Andō, “Suiden chūshin shikan hihan no kōzai,” 410–411. International ethnography and archaeology
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